Here's the irony.
Marketing agencies exist to help businesses become more visible.
Yet when we asked ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity which UK marketing agencies they recommend, not a single agency appeared across all three AI platforms.
Zero.
No consensus.
No universally recognised market leader.
In fact, this was the most fragmented sector we've analysed in the entire Tenacious AI Visibility Index.
While sectors such as Recruitment and Law showed strong agreement between AI models, marketing agencies produced completely different recommendations depending on which platform was used.
For agency owners, that's a fascinating insight.
For buyers, it means the shortlist you receive depends heavily on whether you're using ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity.
And for the industry as a whole, it raises an important question:
If marketing agencies can't consistently appear in AI recommendations themselves, what does that tell us about the future of visibility?
For this edition of the Tenacious AI Visibility Index, we asked ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity ten questions designed to replicate how businesses evaluate marketing agencies.
The questions covered:
All questions were UK-focused and reflected genuine buyer intent.
The objective wasn't to determine which agencies are best.
The objective was to understand which agencies AI systems recommend when businesses ask for help.
As with previous sectors, each model behaved differently.
ChatGPT returned a curated sector-wide ranking rather than answering individual questions.
Claude answered all ten questions with named agency recommendations.
Perplexity answered all ten questions but only returned named company citations on two occasions.
The remaining eight responses contained no specific agency recommendations.
If you're interested in how visibility is measured across AI environments, our AI visibility metrics guide explores the signals increasingly influencing discoverability inside AI-generated recommendations.
| Rank | Agency | ChatGPT Rank | Claude Mentions | Perplexity Citations | Models Agree |
| 1 | Impression | #2 | 1 | — | 2/3 |
| 2 | Growth Division | #4 | 2 | — | 2/3 |
| 3 | Found | #5 | 1 | — | 2/3 |
| 4 | Gripped | — | 5 | 1 | 2/3 |
| 5 | Velocity Partners | — | 5 | 1 | 2/3 |
| 6 | Transmission | — | 4 | 1 | 2/3 |
| 7 | Digital Litmus | — | 1 | 1 | 2/3 |
| 8 | Gravity Global | — | 1 | 1 | 2/3 |
| 9 | The Growth Syndicate | — | 1 | 1 | 2/3 |
| 10 | Blazon Agency | #1 | — | — | 1/3 |
The most important finding isn't who came first.
It's that nobody achieved consensus.
Unlike Recruitment, where seven firms appeared across all three models, the marketing sector produced complete fragmentation.
ChatGPT's recommendations leaned heavily towards growth agencies, performance marketing specialists and startup-focused consultancies.
Impression, Growth Division and Found all performed strongly within ChatGPT's ranking.
Claude saw the market very differently.
Gripped and Velocity Partners emerged as dominant players, appearing five times each across buyer-focused questions.
Transmission also featured prominently.
This suggests Claude places greater emphasis on B2B marketing expertise, demand generation and content-led growth.
Perplexity provided relatively limited company citation data, but where it did return recommendations, it broadly aligned with Claude's perspective rather than ChatGPT's.
That divergence matters.
If a business owner asked ChatGPT for a marketing agency recommendation and then asked Claude the same question, there's a strong chance they would receive two entirely different shortlists.
No other sector in the index showed this level of disagreement.
One explanation may be the type of content each AI platform appears to rely on.
ChatGPT's shortlist heavily favours agencies associated with growth, performance marketing and startup ecosystems.
Many of these agencies produce content focused on experimentation, growth frameworks and measurable outcomes.
Claude's recommendations lean more heavily towards established B2B agencies, demand generation specialists and firms with strong thought leadership footprints.
Agencies such as Gripped, Velocity Partners and Transmission all fit that profile.
This distinction is important.
It suggests visibility is not simply about publishing more content.
It's about publishing the type of content AI systems recognise as authoritative for specific buyer questions.
We explore this in more detail in our guide on what actually drives AI visibility, where we break down the relationship between expertise, authority and AI-generated recommendations.
This dataset contains an uncomfortable truth for the agency sector.
Visibility is becoming a service that agencies sell.
Yet AI visibility remains inconsistent across the industry itself.
That doesn't mean agencies that failed to appear are ineffective.
Far from it.
Many highly respected agencies appeared only once, while others didn't appear at all despite strong reputations and excellent client results.
What the data does show is that AI visibility and market reputation are not always the same thing.
AI systems can only recommend agencies they can confidently identify, understand and validate.
That appears to be driven by factors such as:
The agencies that surfaced most frequently weren't necessarily the largest agencies.
Nor were they always the most awarded.
They were often the agencies producing content around the exact topics buyers were asking about.
That's one of the reasons firms such as Gripped, Velocity Partners and Transmission performed so strongly within Claude's recommendations.
Their content ecosystems align closely with B2B growth, demand generation and revenue-focused marketing topics.
For agencies looking to improve visibility inside AI platforms, a strong generative engine optimisation guide can help identify where authority gaps exist and how AI systems interpret expertise within a specific niche.
Unlike Claude and Perplexity, ChatGPT returned a single curated ranking of UK marketing agencies.
Below is the exact ranking generated.
| Rank | Agency | Why ChatGPT Ranked Them |
| #1 | Blazon Agency | Product launch specialist with integrated strategy, creative and PR services. |
| #2 | Impression | Data-driven agency focused on SEO, PPC and digital PR. |
| #3 | VERB Brands | Luxury marketing agency serving fashion, hospitality and automotive brands. |
| #4 | Growth Division | Supports Series A startups with growth strategy, channel experimentation and marketing automation. |
| #5 | Found | Data-driven agency offering multi-channel marketing with transparent metrics and ROI. |
| #6 | inBeat | Micro-influencer and user-generated content specialist providing scalable influencer campaigns. |
| #7 | The Small Biz Expert | SME-focused digital marketing agency offering affordable, hands-on support. |
| #8 | Rise at Seven | Creative agency known for viral campaigns combining SEO expertise with bold ideas. |
| #9 | Click Consult | Search marketing specialist and Google Premier Partner delivering SEO, CRO and PPC |
| #10 | Digital Uncut | Startup-focused growth agency offering flexible engagement models. |
One of the more surprising findings is that several agencies appearing in ChatGPT's top ten did not appear anywhere in Claude's recommendations.
Likewise, some of Claude's strongest performers were absent from ChatGPT's ranking.
This reinforces the central finding of the report: The marketing sector currently has no agreed AI leaderboard.
Different AI platforms appear to have fundamentally different interpretations of market authority.
Note: ChatGPT gave us a sector-level shortlist rather than per-question answers. Claude answered all 10 questions with named recommendations. Perplexity answered all 10 questions and returned company citations on 2 of 10 questions. Where it did not name firms, we've noted that below.
The marketing sector is unique.
Most industries rely on agencies to help them become more visible.
That makes this dataset particularly revealing.
If AI platforms cannot consistently agree on which marketing agencies should be recommended, then AI visibility is still very much an emerging battleground.
Today, most agency buyers still rely on referrals, networks and traditional search.
Increasingly, however, buyers are also turning to AI assistants for recommendations.
The agencies that appear inside those recommendations gain exposure before a prospect visits a website, reads a case study or books a call.
The agencies that don't appear may never enter the consideration set at all.
This is why visibility is evolving beyond rankings and backlinks.
AI systems increasingly rely on authority signals, trusted references and topical expertise when determining who to recommend.
With our AI visibility services, the challenge is no longer just being visible to search engines.
It's being visible to the AI systems that increasingly shape buyer decisions.
The marketing sector produced the most fragmented results in the entire Tenacious AI Visibility Index.
No agency achieved consensus.
No clear market leader emerged.
Instead, different AI platforms surfaced different agencies based on their own interpretation of authority, expertise and relevance.
For agency owners, that's both a challenge and an opportunity.
The challenge is that visibility remains inconsistent.
The opportunity is that the leaderboard is still being formed.
Unlike sectors where a handful of firms dominate every recommendation, marketing remains highly competitive and relatively open.
The agencies building authority, publishing expertise and strengthening their visibility across AI platforms today may be the firms that dominate recommendations tomorrow.
Want To Know If Your Agency Appears In AI Search?
If potential clients are asking ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity which marketing agencies they should consider, are you part of the answer?
Run a free AI visibility scan today at: https://www.answerarchitect.ai
You'll receive:
Or book a free AI Visibility Audit: https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/dwhitby
We'll analyse your visibility across modern AI search environments and show you exactly where opportunities exist to improve discoverability.
Whether you're an agency, consultancy or in-house marketing team, understanding how AI systems perceive your brand is becoming an increasingly important competitive advantage.
Which marketing agencies appeared across all three AI models?
None. This was the only sector analysed so far where no agency achieved full consensus across ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity.
Why do AI platforms disagree so much about marketing agencies?
Different models appear to favour different signals of authority. ChatGPT leaned towards growth and performance-focused agencies, while Claude favoured B2B and content-led agencies.
Which agencies achieved the strongest visibility overall?
The strongest performers included:
However, none appeared across all three platforms.
Does this research show which agency is best?
No. The report measures visibility rather than quality. It identifies which agencies AI systems recommend when answering buyer questions.
Why did Perplexity return fewer recommendations?
Perplexity answered all ten questions but only returned named agency citations on two occasions. The remaining responses contained no specific company recommendations.
Can smaller agencies still appear in AI recommendations?
Yes. Many specialist agencies appeared within the dataset despite operating in niche markets and competing against much larger firms
